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Valve Discusses Team Fortress 2's Future
The Escapist chatted with Valve's Robin Walker about how the Team Fortress 2 team has been listening to feedback and continually updating the game to fix problems and add to the gameplay experience. Walker mentions that ideas for new classes are "floating around," and that a new mode of play will be introduced soon.
"'Players have driven our entire approach to designing achievements, the way we tie unlockables to those achievements and the design of those new weapons themselves. The choices we made within the Medic and Heavy updates were very much the result of the ways that players have used that combination of classes within the game. The addition of the payload game mode came from players requesting an old Team Fortress Classic map called Hunted, and describing what they did and didn't like in that map.' ... The Scout is the next class slated for the special treatment, and Walker expects the update will be available early this year. Additionally, the team is juggling a number of side projects at the moment, including finally bringing a year's worth of the downloadable content and upgrades to the Xbox 360 version of the game. A new Payload map is in the works, more community maps are on the way and the team will soon unveil a very different new game mode."
Actually, I can't find anything to troll about regarding Valve. They create quality games with non-intrusive DRM. So I'll just resort to the standard racist trolling.
OOOK OOOK BANANA FUCKED HIS LINES UP!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! THAT'S WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU'VE GOT A HOUSE-NIGGER RUNNING THE COUNTRY!
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time
You mean the old "Hunted President" map?
Hell yes, that was great. I haven't played a lot of TF2, but back in the days of old I was a big player of TF (over quakeworld, not over HL, the original TF!). Is the old "Rock" map available too?
I really liked Quake and Team Fortress but I still haven't played TF 2, mostly because I have a mac.
Anyway though wifi play on the DS suck I think it would had been a nice title on the DS. The graphics probably makes it somewhat easier to render with the very limited amount of polygons usable on the DS, the controls would probably work somewhat and the graphics would be good enough for old school enjoyment.
Too bad it will never happen =P, 360? Couldn't care less, I'd prefer it on PC any day.
Omg, was browsing around videos and found this:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VqBPq48x6GA&fmt=18
Fucking amazing, I haven't played Halflife so I don't know how powerful the weapons and bunny jumping is there but I know the methods used and I so like to watch people with mad skills in a game :D
A game mechanic I hope to see return: collect multiple flags for the win.
Valve really messed up TF2. First, the fact that it took forever to come out, which didn't help because of the high expectations. Second of all, the cartoon characters. It looks like a children's game. At a time when Valve could've really spiced up the types of weapons available to each class and really separated itself from other fps, Valve decides to remove the grenades. What a joke.
Since the release of Quake and TFC, there has not been a FPS that has really stood apart from the others. Apparently game developers now think the bigger the budget the better which is probably why no "gamer" I know plays new FPS games. New FPS primarily consist of an engine you've used before with different player models and maps. Nothing new. It's time for a change and fortunately developers _are_ going to have to change and be creative if they want to survive in this economy.
I used to love the original QWTF, I thought it was fantastic, perhaps the game I spent more time on than any other, despite having to pay dialup costs per minute back then.
I followed TF ever since it came out, and when TF2 was originally announce as a mod for Quake II I was excited, I was equally excited when it was slated as a massive combat game with commanders and people dropping down out of helicopters as the screenshots showed for Half-Life and then it's own game. After around 5 years I got bored of waiting then something like 9 years on it finally arrived.
Yet, when it arrived, everything new had been dropped and it turned out to be some copy of the original TV, minus some pretty damn important features like grenades and coupled in with some horrible graphical style. Now they talk of some of the classic maps and game modes, perhaps they'll even bring grenades back.
But my point is this, whilst TF2 is great, people obviously want more. It's taken them 9 or 10 years to end up back where they started, mimicking QWTF and even then not quite (again no grenades, lack of old favourite maps). Surely the lesson to be learned by now is that if they want to immitate the success of the original then all they needed to do all along is simply immitate the original albeit with updated graphics (minus the cartoony theme change).
Yes, I very much miss the QWTF days, but it does really seem Valve is only just in recent years beginning to realise what the old QWTF fans said all along- just stay true to the original. They've had a decade to figure this out.
http://se.youtube.com/watch?v=QYBs_lslyuY&fmt=18
... would be a step in the right direction.
Those guys at Valve aren't stupid. (Hell, I've gotta hand it to them, they're some of the best developers around. They are to this generation what Blizzard was to the last.) When they realized that the honeymoon was over between gamers and Team Fortress 2, they poured all of their effort and energy into Left 4 Dead. Why'd they do that?
- As a competitive FPS, Team Fortress 2's gameplay doesn't add up. The balance is god awful. Did the Pyro really need a back-stab when the flamethrower was already practically OHKO? How many of the guns don't shoot sideways, anyway? Why yes, you should need half of your team or an ubercharge to handle one sentry turret. The only reason to play Soldier is if you have enough cover to spam your rockets, since they move slower than some of the classes run and only do respectable damage when you score a critical hit. (Meaning that the class is only good with saturation fire, which the Demoman can do much, much better. Let's not forget their pathetic conc-jump, which the Demoman is also better at.) There are too many issues with the gameplay to list, but you know one thing that does even the odds? All-crit servers.
- Related to the above, there's a reason Team Fortress 2 also goes by 'Counter Strike Casual'. Very few of the weapons are reliable, meaning that whether or not you take out an opponent (even at point blank range in the case of the Scout) is left to chance. That leaves team formation and movement at the fore which, while an admirable design choice, is not mutually exclusive to making the game more skill-oriented than this. If it weren't for ammo, you would literally get the same gameplay experience out of having everyone hold the left mouse button and 'w' and then move toward the enemy with the best formation winning. Even as a beginner's game that's shallow.
- Nobody likes making maps for Source. This is as true in Team Fortress 2 as it is for every other game since Half Life 2. A victim of its own success, games made for the Source engine raised the bar for quality in graphics, maps, and levels, but failed to make reproducing that any easier. It's very unusual for me to find custom maps in circulation on any server for any Source game, and Team Fortress 2 is no different. The maps it came with get very old very fast.
Since they already kind of fucked up with the game and people aren't going to buy it twice, why support it? Unfortunately, this 'throw it to the dogs' mentality only works with games that are actually easy and worthwhile to modify. Valve's art project had potential that was largely left unfulfilled, and now the game has extremely little good content and a lot of long standing problems that... Well, look at it this way. Ten years ago, the Half-Life mod community could've fixed this in a week. Not so now. If you as a company can't see your product getting more sales by you supporting it, the only reason you should support it is as a courtesy, and the revenue stream comes before courtesy. (Otherwise, courtesy is something you can't afford.)
The absence of grenades is one of the best parts of TF2
TF2 and L4D while different, are both examples of Valve listening very closely to the community.
With TF2 in particular there are servers you can join just about any time of the day and experience very high level quality gameplay. The maps are for the most part decent, some are great, and the play is very balanced provided you get a 'Team' to act like a team. On a recent warpath map over the holidays we had 3.5 hour single match with 16 v 16 teams. Just about everyone on those teams was a top tier player. Intense action, balanced class distribution, and amazing individual and team play. the fact that you can log into an arbitrary server and experience that level of play is something that is missing from just about every other team experience out there.
Having said that. the scout doesn't really need an upgrade, people who are good at playing scout are already devastating. Most aren't very good. That doesn't make it a class problem. I personally would like to see the engineers (and I normally do not play engineer) have a bigger role. Once the engineers set up their equipment, there really is not much else for them to do. What would be great is the ability to use an uber charge to get an engineer through enemy lines, and to one of the enemy garages. The engineer being able to 'pick the lock' and then change the lock would give the team the ability to flank the enemy and force their respawn point back one level. It would make the battle a bit more non-linear and make distribution of engineers much more interesting (instead of the cloud of engineers at the current point). It also gives the engineers a tactical offensive capability. Also, spys could be used to pick the lock and let the engineers have a key which would give them access. That would accomplish the same thing but much more subtly.
A second addition I would like to see is to be able to pass objects between teammates. A demo could give a spy a bomb to plant. The medics could give away med-packs, anyone could bring an engineer metal (drop ammo).. etc..again, emphasizing the team aspect.
Its truly a great game, and while different from its predecessors without losing the core essence, it stands alone with the level of balance that exists across the classes.
I should prelude this with a bit of info on my PC, to give some perspective. It's a Dell Inspiron laptop, so, in all fairness, it's not really a 'gaming PC'. It has a Core2Duo 2.0Ghz processor (I think the model number was T-7200), nVidia GForce Go 7200 video chipset, 1 Gig of RAM, and a 7200RPM hard drive (I payed extra for the faster HDD instead of going with the stock 5400RPM disk).
I think my system sits somewhere in the middle of PC's, performance-wise. I know there are systems that are much faster than mine, but also a lot of systems much slower.
Anyhow, I tried playing TF2 for awhile, but even with all the graphics settings turned down quite a lot, my computer just could not keep up with it for some reason. I play quite a lot of other 3D games on this laptop with no problems (or minimal problems). Since the most important attribute of an FPS is speed, I'm disappointed that TF2 doesn't scale down to middle-tier systems better.
I realized after submitting, I had put the model for the GPU wrong. It's a GForce Go 7900, not 7200.
Dear Valve:
Please kick EA in the ass so that the PS3 people can get some updates and enhancements. Though the press claims that PS3 is the console of the year/future, PS3 TF2 players are still sucking hind tit. It's been a year and a half since TF2 came to PS3 and we've had NOTHING since.
Unlockables ruined the game for so many, including myself. They have no place in a game like this.
"The Escapist chatted with Valve's Robin Walker about how the Team Fortress 2 team has been listening to feedback and continually updating the game to fix problems and add to the gameplay experience"
Really? Don't tell that to the PS3 fans. You might get an ear full. The PS3 version was basically abandoned by valve and EA. The problem is valve and EA had another company port it to PS3 and so they both claim they are not responsible for updates for it. This has caused PS3 users to be very upset with valve and EA.
They didn't just dumb the game down, they flattened the learning curve and made it so skill has almost no bearing in your performance. Which ever team is more aggressive and sticks together better will win without fail. This is 'Movement Formation: The Game', which is why I only play custom games now, what few there are.
The only class that requires any coordination at all is the Sniper, which is just as well because the Sniper is goddamn terrible. The Pyro is by far the most versatile class with a nearly instant-kill weapon, damage over time on everything, mine-sweeping, rocket-proofing, moderate health and speed, and an unlockable weapon that makes your flamethrower even more instant-kill. He's followed by the Demoman, who does everything the Soldier can better and then some. Especially after the last update (super dispensers that can heal you as fast as you can repair your turret!) the Engineer can hold off the other team three to one, and if they're working in pairs or greater, forget taking down the turrets without your entire team focusing on them. (I call turrets 'death zone projectors' because that's exactly what they are.) The rest of the classes - Heavy, Medic, Soldier, Sniper, and Spy - are sub-par at best with the exception of the Scout, which tends to be a good objective-grabber but complete crap otherwise. (Frantic spy-checking and even a modicum of vigilance renders the Spy completely useless.)
Also, shotguns. Shotguns everywhere, and splash weapons too. Accuracy, what's that? The pistols are just as accurate as a shotgun spray, and you don't even aim better if you crouch. Dynamic play? Emergent behavior? A whole cast of classes that aren't pathetic one-trick ponies instead of a tiny few that dominate? Screw that, you get 'Counter Strike 4 Kids'.
Is the old "Rock" map available too?
I played on Rock2 just the other day. That is the former name of the map for TFC. It plays very similar to the original if not dead on.
I couldn't agree more.
I'm supposed to be working right now.
I'm hoping Valve or another company such as Epic, Id, Dice will give us a FPS MMO some day soon. TF2 is sort of there with the weapon unlocking, but to have something like TF2 with huge world battles...I'd happily hand over my monthly cash.
WFA (q3 mod) had 9 classes, it evolved from WF (q2 mod) which was inspired by the original TF. Played much faster, offered much more in terms of gameplay also.